Spaces in movement

Conception: Geisha Fontaine and Pierre Cottreau
Dancers: Geisha Fontaine, Julie Galopin and Alexandre Théry
Production: Mille Plateaux Associés, le 6b Saint-Denis and Lieux infinis
Pictures: Charity Thomas

Spaces in movement is a meeting place between place, architecture and dance. It was created in 2018 at the French Pavilion at the Venice International Architecture Biennale, echoing the title of the Biennale: FreeSpace, and that of the French Pavilion exhibition: Lieux infinis.

Spaces in movement is a choreographic performance that combines real space with creative, poetic, dancing and even political spaces. How far are I from the other, from the group? What project are we forming together? This performance proposes to navigate between individual spaces and a collective body which unfolds, creates lines, masses and volumes.

First, performers activate words and dances to play in situ with the space and its potentials. A joyful occupation of the performance venue follows. Discreetly, the dancers then invite certain spectators to join them. Everyone is free to venture there – or not ! Anyway, everyone is invited to play with volumes, perspectives and vanishing points – whether through the involvement of their whole body or just their gaze.

Spaces in movement activates a changing geometry by occupying in turn the smallest possible space and the largest. By activating both the stealth gesture and a prolonged movement. By simultaneously making the place an accomplice and an area to experience. This creates the deployment of an organism made up of individuals where space “breathes”. A united body unfolds slowly, accelerates, plays with its multiple forces. Lines emerge, intersect, weave a new shared space.

Spaces in movement ranges from the space of the dancers to that of the spectators. It then becomes an infinite place, where to live, a time, a free space.

“The space of our life is neither continuous, nor infinite, nor homogeneous, nor isotropic. But do we know precisely where it breaks, where it bends, where it disconnects and where it comes together?”  Georges Pérec – Espèces d’espaces